Aside from the Monty Python proposal to “tax all foreigners living abroad,” it’s hard to imagine a tax most Canadians would like.

And business lobbyists are quick to squawk when they particularly dislike a specific tax or tax proposals. These include the province’s reversion to PST from HST, sky high business property taxes in Vancouver and many other B.C. municipalities, high development fees and amenity contributions, hidden payroll taxes like EI “premiums” that boost federal revenue by billions a year, TransLink’s abortive parking tax proposal of a few years ago, and more.

Specific lobby efforts often fail, although a telling new analysis implies that — judging from the bottom line outcome and looked at over time — the wins outweigh the losses. For the second year running, Canada in general and Vancouver in particular have stellar scores in KPMG’s annual global survey of tax competitiveness.

The latest results, based on 2013 figures, rank Canada’s tax competitiveness as the best — meaning we have the lowest total business tax burden — among developed nations. And Vancouver is second only to Toronto in a comparison of 51 major cities around the world.

The survey considers all kinds of business taxes — corporate income taxes, property taxes, capital taxes, sales taxes, miscellaneous local business taxes and statutory labour costs such as mandatory pension contributions and other payroll-based taxes. Add them up and our advantage over other jurisdictions is considerable.

In the international comparisons, Canada has “a total tax index” of 53.6 on a scale where the U.S. is the benchmark with 100. Canada’s score is 5.5 points lower than in 2012, when we were also deemed the most competitive, and 13 points lower than the second-place United Kingdom.

Vancouver’s score — and this for the year when, in April, the province reverted to the PST from the business-friendly HST — was 54.6 on the same scale. This is 2.9 points higher, or worse, than first-place Toronto, and 1.0 points lower than third-place Montreal, but almost five points lower than the nearest international competitor, Manchester England.

No doubt most local business people will be pleased with these numbers, though they may be less happy to see them in the newspaper. These results are sure to make future lobbying more difficult. After all, when your tax bill is less than everyone else’s, it’s tough to make a case for improvements.

Yet, despite a weak case for further business tax cuts, the case for reforming the way businesses are taxed remains as strong as ever. This is because, as this column has argued in the past, the nature of taxation can be as important as the level when it comes to its impact on business viability and growth.

Simply put, businesses can afford higher taxes at some times than at others. Taxes that hit as hard in bad years as in good, like property taxes, can be crippling if they’re too high. So are sales taxes that raise the cost of setting up or expanding, as they apply when money is hardest to come by. And taxes that increase payroll costs — like EI that costs far more on premiums than it pays in benefits — encourage less hiring, not more.

On the other hand, income taxes take a chunk — in some jurisdictions a hefty chunk — if there are profits. Since good infrastructure and sound government policies are generally a factor in creating good times, you can make the case businesses get their money’s worth.

Yet governments, both provincial and federal, prefer to focus only on cutting corporate tax rates, especially for small business. Meanwhile, they either leave more economically harmful taxes in place, or ratchet them up. The province, in particular, drives property tax worrisomely high by, on one hand, denying municipalities and regional authorities most of the tax tools that would be less damaging, then worsening the problem by adding its own property tax levy to the municipal bills.

Lobbyists could — in my view should — continue pressing for a better tax mix. But their case will be more credible if they cast it in terms of shifting to less-damaging taxes rather than simply cutting the total burden even more.

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